Cypriot MPs "Forget" to Declare Assets

Members of the Republic of Cyprus Parliament have missed the deadline for declaring their assets. This year, none of the elected officials submitted their asset declarations by the required deadline. The Parliament Secretariat has granted them a one-month extension.

According to the newspaper Politis, MPs were supposed to submit their statements by June 1st. However, by the end of this period, none of the lawmakers had done so.

On Thursday, the Parliament Secretariat sent a reminder to all MPs about the need to submit their declarations, extending the deadline until July 8th for this purpose.

After this deadline, the declarations will be published on the parliament's website within a week.

The publication speculates that MPs' negligence in submitting their declarations may be due to the fact that no sanctions are applied if the deadline is missed.

As Cyprus-Mail reminds, MPs, European Parliament members, government ministers, the president, and the speaker of the House of Representatives are required to submit asset or wealth declarations for scrutiny against "illicit enrichment".

In Greek, this statement is known as "Pothen Esches", which translates literally as "Where did you get this from?".

It is noted that since the adoption of the relevant law in 2004, asset declarations submitted by MPs have not been subjected to significant scrutiny.

Until now, MPs typically submitted their statements to the Speaker's office, who then forwarded them to a three-member committee for "review".

This three-member committee consists of MPs. However, according to an amendment to the law that has been under discussion for three years, legislators' wealth declarations will instead be audited by the tax commissioner.

It is expected that the bill amending the legislation will be put to a vote in mid-July.